INTERVIEW WITH LARRY DEBATES
BY MARK MADISON, MAY 1, 2004
RETIRED USFWS EMPLOYEE REUNION
NCTC, SHEPHERDSTOWN, WEST VIRGINIA
DR. MADISON: Why don’t we start out Larry with the spelling of your name and your
birth date? The easiest questions are first.
MR. DEBATES: It’s actually Lawrence, but Larry is what I’ve gone by. I was born
December 18, 1931. After finishing high school I enlisted in the U.S. Navy on January 8,
1951. I was discharged from the Navy in the fall of 1954 to start college at South Dakota
State University. I met my future wife Greta Houtman at the University where she was
in the Pharmacy School. I was pursuing a degree in Fish and Wildlife Management. We
both graduated in 1959 and were married in 1960. I went to work for the State of South
Dakota Game Fish and Park as a summer intern while in school and then as a full-time
employee after graduation in 1959. Then in August 1961 I took my first job with the
USFWS as an Assistant Refuge Manager at Lower Souris NWR. It is now the J. Clark
Salyer NWR.
And like many wives of FWS employees, my wife Greta was my wonderful
supporting partner throughout my career. Any successes I had were because of that
support and sacrifice on her part. She practiced as a Pharmacist in many different places
as I moved many times pursuing my career in the fish and wildlife profession. During
these early years of our marriage she also took on the role of mother. Because we moved
so often, our three daughters were born in three different places. Our eldest, Kari, was
born in Aberdeen, South Dakota in 1961. The second, Renae, was born in Wishek, North
Dakota in 1962. And the youngest, was born in Fergus Falls, Minnesota in 1966. This is
probably not unique to my family, but many times our spouses’ sacrifices and their
contributions are not fully recognized as an important part of a successful career in the
USFWS. In my particular case, my wife and family were the most important part of
making my career a success.
DR. MADISON: The next question is your education and how you came to the
USFWS?
MR. DEBATES: I went into the military for four years before I went to college. I came
back and went to South Dakota State University. I quit for a short period of time and
went out to California and worked so I could get out of debt. I came back and finished in
April of 1959. Then I went to work for the State of South Dakota. I worked there for
about two and a half years. I had done some summer work with them too. I had about
three and a half years with South Dakota. Then, I was in Webster, South Dakota after
having been in about three different places with them. Harvey Nelson, who I think that
then the Deputy in Refuges in the Minneapolis regional office. He came out and talked to
me and asked me how I’d like to go to work with the USFWS. I told him that I’d really
like to work in wetlands. We were working a lot in wetlands already in South Dakota. I
told him that I’d like to see if I could it, and to see if I could stay right in the state.
Harvey said, “Well, we’d like to have you go to Refuges first”. This was so I could get
indoctrinated there. He then said, “We’ve got a position up at Lower Souris Refuge and
we’ll put you up there.” The FWS was kind of shaking out the national wetlands
program. I had been involved in the State program for quite a while. That was in 1961.
He told me that I would stay up there for a while but, “Then we’re going to be developing
some strategies on protection of wetlands in the Dakotas, and we’ll get you back into
wetland work, if everything works out”. I went to Lower Souris, which is now the J.
Clark Salyer Refuge. Ed Smith was the Manager there. I was a Biologist. My title was
Assistant Refuge Manager, but I worked with Merle Hammond quite a bit because he was
a really noted biologist in the FWS. I also worked with the Refuge people. I stayed there
for about six months. Then they put me down in [sic] Wishek, North Dakota. I
delineated wetlands there for a couple of years. We picked out the wetlands that we
thought ought to be protected. Then, Jim Gillette and Ed Crosier, there was a whole crew
of us down there who all had areas that we worked on. When we finished that we were
going to take over and manage the wetlands. As things go, the wetlands program didn’t
move quite as fast, so they were going to have to move some of us to other places. I was
married by then and had two children. I was getting a little nervous about just not
knowing where I was going. That’s one of the other reasons I left working with the State
of South Dakota. I liked the work there, but they didn’t have medical insurance or life
insurance and after you get married, that’s pretty important. I just got a little nervous
and I decided to go and see if I could get in to some more wetland work. I went into River
Basins then. River Basin had a wetlands aspect in it. I went to Aberdeen, South Dakota
where I had working with the State. Milt Reese was the Supervisor there. I was there for
a couple of years and they moved me to Fergus Falls. I worked in wetland there. Then I
went in to the Regional Office and supervised the Biologists in the prairie who were
working on the wetlands program. Then, they were setting up Denver as a new Region.
We were kind of uncertain as to who was going to end up in certain places. Ed Smith had
since moved on from the refuge to being the Supervisor of Refuges in Region 1 in
Portland. Phil Morgan had been his deputy out there. I had been out of Refuges. One
thing is that Forest Carpenter was a pretty parochial kind of guy. When I first hired in to
Refuges; I think they kind of expected that once you were in Refuges, you stay there!
Well, I moved back in to River Basins, so when Ed said that maybe he should move me
back in to Refuges and have me as his Deputy, there was a little bit of resistance in
Refuges. Eventually, I went out there in 1973 in January. I was his Deputy replacing
Phil Morgan who had just left and went out to Atlanta. I served in that function until
he…well, then the Area Offices came into being. I was one of the first Assistant Regional
Directors that they hired under the Area Offices. That’s when they had the Area
Manager selected, and Lynn was the Director. They got the ARD positions filled before
the Area Office, so we still functioned in sort of the old way. We supervised refuges out
of the Regional Office. When Area Offices came in, I went out there and came back again.
I was still in that position. I served in that position I think, from 1976 when Lynn put
me in until 1988. I had twelve years there. For the last year, I was working on waterfowl
stuff, but it was in Central Valley, California. I spent a brief amount of time in Wildlife
Services too, in Minneapolis. I had three divisions that I had worked in, so I had some
experience. I probably wasn’t the best Biologist in the world because you lose that
capability pretty quick. I knew wetlands pretty well. Then I got in to administration,
and like those people this morning pointed out, we didn’t have too many skilled
administrators. Maybe I was a better administrator that I was a biologist, but that’s
what…we set out to do some things in Refuges in Region 1 and we made some changes.
It was Ed and I to start out with and later it was with some of the RDs. After a time, I
eventually started the first North American joint venture in California as kind of a
collateral duty. I was doing that along with being the ARW for Wildlife. That’s when I
was back for my mother-in-law’s funeral and found out…Wally Stupki called me and said
that the Director had called him and told him that Rolf Wallenstrom had been terminated
because he didn’t take the move that they were giving him. Dave Riley had been stripped
of his responsibilities. He was the ARD for Ecological Services for River Basins, I guess,
at that time. I think it was Eco-Service then. I was reassigned from my job to be
assistant to him by Dunkle. I’d be in charge of the North American waterfowl planning in
the Pacific Region. It was just really punitive is what it was. My understanding was, and
I am not sure I am correct on that, but John Doebel had worked for me before. He was a
good employee and he had gone to Washington, D. C. and he came back. When he was in
Washington, I think Bill Horne who was the Assistant Secretary at the time…there was
some work to be done in Alaska that some of the Alaskan people weren’t comfortable
with. It was a land exchange or something. I’m not sure this is all factual, but this is the
way I recall it. Bill Horne told John that he’d like to have him go and work on that
project. John was a doer, so he went up there and worked on it. I think Bill promised
him that when he was done with it, and had done a good job, he would be placed in a new
position. I think John wanted the job I was in. I still wasn’t out of there. If they’d have
talked to me and let me know, “we’d like to do this, and we’d like for you to work with
John and make it an easy transition”…
But instead, when I got back from my mother-in-law’s funeral John was sitting at my
desk and it made it uncomfortable for him, and for me, and the staff. So I ran around and
tried to find a new office and stuff. We started to fight back. They had the Government
Accountability Office in Washington, D. C. They kind of oversee the government. They
came out and interviewed us. Eventually, I think they had some hearings at the GAO.
They kind of saw that there were some things going on in the FWS. They were creating
positions that weren’t really positions but they were trying to put people aside. It was
costing money. I think that might have been part of the demise of Dunkle. They
reassigned him. They took him out of the Director’s job and sent him to OBS in
Colorado. Then John Turner came in. I think that was right after President Bush
[President George H. W. Bush] got in. John Turner kind of put us back onto more of an
even keel. By that time, I think OPM ruled that he had to reinstate Rolf. Turner wrote
me a kind of a letter of apology for the way they handled the situation. That made me
feel better, but I think it made…that’s the way a lot of people were treated as they got
towards the end of their career. They kind of jerked them around and didn’t treat them
the way they should have been; with a little dignity. I see that they are still making that
mistake. I worked for one year, while this appeal was going on at the North American
Waterfowl Plan. I got it up and running and it’s been very successful. I was invited back
to the ten-year anniversary in 1996. It’s really going good, so I felt really good about
that. Some of the things that I felt good about after I had worked on them…we did a lot
of things, and turned around the use on some of the refuges out in our region. They had
kind of gotten away from the primary purpose of managing a refuge. They had water
skiing going on in some of the area of Ruby Lake where we had some of the best
waterfowl production, especially Red Heads. We finally got that turned around. It took
awhile, and it wasn’t just me. You had to have the RDs. Kahler Martinson when we
started that. Of course I knew Kahler from college. I was there in Portland about nine
months ahead of him. We turned something around on Ruby Lake. We also got control
of the cattle management on Malhuer NWR, which was pretty that was pretty much in
the hands of ranchers. There are a number of things that we did on refuges. We also tried
to upgrade, a little bit, the quality of some of our managers. Some of them just needed
some improvements and you can’t blame it all on them. It was the way they were
managed; just kind of let them manage the refuges in the field like they wanted to. We did
initiate some of the things in California that were unique. We established an easement
program on wetlands in California. That had never been done before. We kind of picked
that idea up from the Prairies. They used it for production habitat. We picked it up and
used the same concept out there for wintering habitat. We had a lot of resistance to start
out with, but it really has worked out well. It’s not a perfect program, but better that
sitting and watching it disappear. A lot of times it was the hunting clubs and the like who
still had the good wetlands. Some would say, “Why do you agree about that?” A lot of
times, what was happening was that these old time hunters that were really dedicated to
the waterfowl and hunting were either dying or leaving. What we were finding was that
some of the kids didn’t have that same feeling. So even if it had been a waterfowl club for
years, it was not guaranteed. A lot of these old guys really had a strong feeling about that
wetlands, so they kind liked the idea that maybe even after they were gone that wetland
was going to be there. We got a number of areas where we got the easement program
going and it was really successful. That fit right in with the North American Waterfowl
Plan.
DR. MADISON: Why don’t you tell me about that, since you were there?
MR. DEBATES: Okay, the North American Waterfowl Plan first came into being, and
Harvey Nelson was kind of the overseer of that out of Washington, D.C. They wanted to
get up one pilot program to see [how it would go]. Bob Streeter was in there too. They
picked the Central Valley of California. It was a new approach to doing business. We
established the committee, on the ground. We had the Audubon Society, the Defenders of
Wildlife, California Fish and Game, the California Waterfowl Association. There were a
number of groups who had actually in the past been our critics. We put them together,
and I kind of chaired those meetings. I had a good Biologist named Dick Bower who was
very good technically. Mike Miller had put together a concept plan on the wetlands that
were valuable. Then we went in with this group and developed some strategies to make
sure we protect those wetlands long after we are gone. We sat down, and I think we
wrote out about six major objectives to keep the focus. All of these guys had a lot of
differences of opinion. The Defenders of Wildlife were not in our camp, but they knew
that this was a key issue, even to their values. We tried to stress that we were not doing
this just for waterfowl. We worked on that as a committee, to find the objective. Then
we started to try and implement them. I remember some of those objectives. We had a
lot of discussion as to whether or not some of them were real or aren’t they. Some
thought we’d never get the Central Valley Project reauthorized. It was an irrigation
project and we didn’t have any guaranteed water supply for our refuges. We were just
doing it with water that was return flow irrigation water. It was getting tougher and
tougher. But we put in it there as a goal. There was one guy who was very astute in the
political arena. He was with the California Waterfowl Association. His name was Dan
Chapin. He had really worked the California legislature and he knew how to work with
the legislators. He really got a lot of stuff done in California. After I left, I heard that he
had actually gotten Senator Bradley out to conduct a hearing on the reauthorization of the
Central Valley Water Project. That was almost unheard of, but eventually, it happened.
Eventually, they got some firm water supplies for refuges, and also for some in stream
flows. That was after I was gone. I didn’t have anything to do with that, but I think that
the fact that we put that in the objectives and gave them something to really work on, it
really focused them. That was the best accomplishment to me, in the Central Valley. Of
course the easement thing was a tool used. There were some new acquisitions and the fee
too. One of the major objectives was to get the rice growers to leave some of that stuff
out there in the fall of the year. We were in an adversarial relationship with the rice
growers. I went back in 1996, they had that celebration of the ten-year plan, and there
were 400 and some people there. There were rice growers and all kinds of people who
had come together to work on a common objective; The North American Waterfowl Plan.
It was rewarding to me. Recently I went to the North American Wildlife Conference in
Spokane. The thing that really impressed me was how many joint ventures there are
going on now, throughout the United States. They are incorporated into the flyway
management. There is a lot of support. And the political situation is favorable because is
gives the politicians something to spend money on in their own areas. They can do it.
It’s kind of a Senator Byrd concept. If you give them something that they can do for
you, they are willing to help. From what I understand from talking at the Wildlife
Conference, most of the funding for the North American is pretty good. It’s primarily
because you’ve got that broad political support.
DR. MADISON: You’ve done a good job.
MR. DEBATES: Well, somebody has done a good job. The O and M part is still a
problem. There is still not that kind of support, not just for North American but also for
the entire Service. The Migratory Bird Program has been short changed. They are in bad
trouble; the flyways and stuff. They don’t have enough money. It was gratifying to me
to see all of the North American plans, and they are just about all throughout the United
States now. They are also in Canada. We were working with Canadians too. I think
that’s been a successful program. I had a part in it, but we had some good technical
people that helped guide us and made sure we had the right things to work on. Then we
had some good people following up to implement it. It wasn’t just the FWS people. It
had good representation and cooperation. I think really showed what you can do if you
work together, and that was an accomplishment. So anyway, that was kind of a good
final project for me to be on. I probably would have stayed on a little bit longer, but
when you get in an adversarial relationship with your own organization, you kind of get,
well, people are a little bit cautious of you. I shouldn’t necessarily say ‘cautious’ of you
so much, but the mid-career people are nervous. They can wonder if that is going to hit
me? Is that going to happen to me? So I think I lost some credibility with some of the
administrators; not so much with the troops. I think the troops liked that somebody
stood up and talked back to somebody who they didn’t think was doing a good job. I
served under five RDs in Region 1. I went there with John Finley, and Kahler Martinson
came. Then there was Dick Myshak and the last one I worked directly under was Rolf
Wallenstrom. Then Plenert came in while I was on the North American Waterfowl Plan.
There was more and more politics getting involved, each year that I was in the FWS. One
of my former bosses, Ed Smith, was very experienced. He told me that the big changed
that occurred in the FWS while he was there; and it continued to go that way, was back
when we used to be able to stand up to management when somebody wanted to say
something. Politically, if we had a good case, we could go back and it was non-biased. Ed
said that changed a great deal when they started adding a lot of staff at the Assistant
Secretary level. He said that back then, they used to only have one or two guys over at
the Assistant Secretary’s office.
DR. MADISON: That wasn’t that long ago.
MR. DEBATES: He also said that when you sent something back to the FWS, it was
usually your Director and key staff people who have you that kind of support. He said
that all of a sudden, most things that were controversial headed right up to the Assistant
Secretary’s office. I think that has continued to grow. I don’t know what the staffing
there is like now. But then, the other thing they used to do was to bring people up from
the Service to work up there. This was fine, but still, they just got more into the
management of your business than you really needed them in.
DR. MADISON: Were there other changes that you observed in the Service? You had a
pretty long tenure.
MR. DEBATES: For one thing, when we first started we were pretty much fish and
wildlife. The Endangered Species Act came in 1973, or whatever, and the National
Environment Policy Act came in. Both of those things changed the way we did business.
The laws that came in on the archeological side, and the Administrative Act, and all of
those things changed things. It was no longer manage your own refuge, dig your own
dikes and that stuff. You had to go through a lot of the same hoops that we wanted other
people to go through. So it was a different way of doing business. We had to hire people
who worked on impact statements. We had to have people with that skill; not just
reviewing them but writing them too. We had to have archeologists to look at the
archeological stuff. You couldn’t just go out and start moving dirt until that was done.
The Administrative Act made it so we had to make sure we did a much better job of going
through and making sure we involved people in the right decision making process. It was
pretty simple when I first started in the profession, but it got more complex. I think
today, I’ve been out for a long time, but I think it’s even more difficult. Now there are
just so many things that you’ve got to make sure you go through the right hoops. From
and outfit that used to drive around, and if they saw some predators, or saw some
burrows or whatever on the refuge that were doing damage, why, they shot them. They
didn’t tell anybody about it. But those days are gone forever. We just managed with a
lot more freedom. I think the other thing that changed an awful lot was that we never got
in the legal arena as much as we began to do towards the end of my career, and even more
so now. We did have a little bit of that at the end of my career. I had oversight, along
with Rolf Wallenstrom on the Spotted Owl issue. I had worked on an inter-agency
committee on that with BLM, the Forest Service, SCS, and everything. We knew that
this was a real problem. We had a subcommittee on the Spotted Owl that was essentially
made up of all the biologists from all of these agencies. They just told us that this was
headed for extinction if you don’t do anything about it. It was associated with old
growth, but it was as indicator of species. We tried through that inter-agency, or at least I
did, in getting BLM and Forest Service because they had mostly old growth forest left, to
start paying attention to the owl. They were really reluctant to do it. They’d tell us that
in a meeting, but when you got out on the ground, they were still cutting timber and not
paying that much attention to the Spotted Owl. We were unsuccessful in getting things
changed through that media. Then, when it came up to being listed, there was some real
reluctance because Watt and Odell and some of those guys were in there. It’s a little bit
like the climate now; they don’t want to add any new species. We knew that the
biological stuff was there. And Rolf was RD then. There were three of us that tried to
convince Rolf that we ought to move ahead no matter what. But Rolf had a good
relationship with the Chief of the Forest Service. They talked in over and thought they
could…. Well, what happened was that the environmental community on the outside
sued us. When it got to the Judge, the Judge sent back and essentially told us do a better
job. He said we couldn’t ignore this. Then when you get the legal stuff involved, you
lose all of your flexibility. You are better off doing something rather than getting the
Judge to tell you what to do. That happened in the Fisheries program when Sam went
out there. It happened with the Spotted Owl. It happened in all kinds of places; where
you get the Judge starting to tell you what to do. And then, I think too, that when we
implemented steel shot, which was a very controversial issue; that probably got Kahler
Martinson canned. We pushed it in Region 1 because EIS was down and everything.
Arnett was the Director of California at the time and we were really booming on it.
California was absolutely adamant against steel shot. They didn’t want nothing to do
with it. It seems hard to believe now, because steel shot is implemented all over. But
that was in the late 1980’s and early 1981. We pushed ahead with it, and Kahler
particularly. When Arnett got to be the Assistant Secretary, of course Watt was in there
then, a lot of people who came in from the outside into those political positions kind of
had an axe to grind. They didn’t necessarily come in a real good supporter of the FWS.
They were usually after [something]. They had some adversarial relationships. When
Arnett got in there, he just started chipping away. We had some research guys out
working under contract and he got those cancelled. That was about the same time that the
Senior Executive Service came in. I guess that would have been under President Carter, or
just before in the late 1970s. When Kahler was RD then, he had been under the old Civil
Service Program. When they interviewed him, they asked him if he wanted to be in SES.
He asked what the pluses of that were. They said he could have unlimited leave to
accumulate. The also said that if he didn’t like it and wanted to drop back in to the
biological end, he could do that. But when it came time for him to do that, they wouldn’t
let him. They essentially gave him an ultimatum of either going to Albuquerque, or be
terminated. He had some special family situations that made that bad. He could just see
the handwriting on the wall. He saw Albuquerque as the first; but what was the next.
They were using it as a punitive thing rather than on a positive note. That was another
issue we were involved in that was very controversial.
Another issue that we crossed Hodell on was, well, I shouldn’t say crossed, but
there was some power line crossings that they used to like to string across federal lands;
particularly BLM, but they could go across us too. We took them on on that. Hodell
was head of BPA at the time. They were going to string a line across our Refuge up at
Umatilla. The first time I met with them, well, they came in and met with me because I
had oversight on Refuges, they said they were doing to do this. I said, “Wait a minute!”
They said that they had the steel bought and everything already. I asked them where
they had been. “We’re going to let you [do that]”. That was a key waterfowl area. We
fought with them for quite a while. Hodell was the BPA Director. Word got our among
the power companies out there that the RD and some of his people were going to be hard
nosed about going across refuges with power lines. The word was that every one should
be aware of this. I remember that we had a major one that was going to go right across
Klamath Basin Refuge. It was a 5000kv line I think. We said, “No”. As I remember at
the time, Hodell was no longer head of BPA, but he was a kind of consultant for another
power company PP&L that was going to bring this line through. There was good
biological data that said this was a poor idea. We tried to stop it, but it was still moving
ahead. Kahler Martinson was pretty hard nosed on resource issues, so he asked Lynn,
who was the Director. Lynn didn’t want to take it on real bad. But Kahler asked Lynn if
he minded him going to talk with Andres. That’s kind of different. So Lynn told him if
he wanted to, it would be all right. Kahler got the maps and went and got an audience
with Andres. He just laid it out on the floor and explained another alternative that would
be better than this one. After one briefing with Andres, he said that the alternative should
be taken. Of course, he had oversight over BLM too. There was a BLM alternative, but
it took it away from Klamath Basin.
There were a number of issues like that, which were kind of tough from a political
end. Laxhalt was a Senator when we took on some of those issues out at Ruby Lake
where the powerboats were at. In California there was Arnett with the steel shot and
there was Hodell with the power lines. We weren’t exactly making a lot of good political
moves. Maybe we were naïve, but it sure got their attention enough so that they weren’t
just going to do some things that they had done in the past.
DR. MADISON: Larry, thank you very much. I’ve got to break it off here. This is
great!

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INTERVIEW WITH LARRY DEBATES
BY MARK MADISON, MAY 1, 2004
RETIRED USFWS EMPLOYEE REUNION
NCTC, SHEPHERDSTOWN, WEST VIRGINIA
DR. MADISON: Why don’t we start out Larry with the spelling of your name and your
birth date? The easiest questions are first.
MR. DEBATES: It’s actually Lawrence, but Larry is what I’ve gone by. I was born
December 18, 1931. After finishing high school I enlisted in the U.S. Navy on January 8,
1951. I was discharged from the Navy in the fall of 1954 to start college at South Dakota
State University. I met my future wife Greta Houtman at the University where she was
in the Pharmacy School. I was pursuing a degree in Fish and Wildlife Management. We
both graduated in 1959 and were married in 1960. I went to work for the State of South
Dakota Game Fish and Park as a summer intern while in school and then as a full-time
employee after graduation in 1959. Then in August 1961 I took my first job with the
USFWS as an Assistant Refuge Manager at Lower Souris NWR. It is now the J. Clark
Salyer NWR.
And like many wives of FWS employees, my wife Greta was my wonderful
supporting partner throughout my career. Any successes I had were because of that
support and sacrifice on her part. She practiced as a Pharmacist in many different places
as I moved many times pursuing my career in the fish and wildlife profession. During
these early years of our marriage she also took on the role of mother. Because we moved
so often, our three daughters were born in three different places. Our eldest, Kari, was
born in Aberdeen, South Dakota in 1961. The second, Renae, was born in Wishek, North
Dakota in 1962. And the youngest, was born in Fergus Falls, Minnesota in 1966. This is
probably not unique to my family, but many times our spouses’ sacrifices and their
contributions are not fully recognized as an important part of a successful career in the
USFWS. In my particular case, my wife and family were the most important part of
making my career a success.
DR. MADISON: The next question is your education and how you came to the
USFWS?
MR. DEBATES: I went into the military for four years before I went to college. I came
back and went to South Dakota State University. I quit for a short period of time and
went out to California and worked so I could get out of debt. I came back and finished in
April of 1959. Then I went to work for the State of South Dakota. I worked there for
about two and a half years. I had done some summer work with them too. I had about
three and a half years with South Dakota. Then, I was in Webster, South Dakota after
having been in about three different places with them. Harvey Nelson, who I think that
then the Deputy in Refuges in the Minneapolis regional office. He came out and talked to
me and asked me how I’d like to go to work with the USFWS. I told him that I’d really
like to work in wetlands. We were working a lot in wetlands already in South Dakota. I
told him that I’d like to see if I could it, and to see if I could stay right in the state.
Harvey said, “Well, we’d like to have you go to Refuges first”. This was so I could get
indoctrinated there. He then said, “We’ve got a position up at Lower Souris Refuge and
we’ll put you up there.” The FWS was kind of shaking out the national wetlands
program. I had been involved in the State program for quite a while. That was in 1961.
He told me that I would stay up there for a while but, “Then we’re going to be developing
some strategies on protection of wetlands in the Dakotas, and we’ll get you back into
wetland work, if everything works out”. I went to Lower Souris, which is now the J.
Clark Salyer Refuge. Ed Smith was the Manager there. I was a Biologist. My title was
Assistant Refuge Manager, but I worked with Merle Hammond quite a bit because he was
a really noted biologist in the FWS. I also worked with the Refuge people. I stayed there
for about six months. Then they put me down in [sic] Wishek, North Dakota. I
delineated wetlands there for a couple of years. We picked out the wetlands that we
thought ought to be protected. Then, Jim Gillette and Ed Crosier, there was a whole crew
of us down there who all had areas that we worked on. When we finished that we were
going to take over and manage the wetlands. As things go, the wetlands program didn’t
move quite as fast, so they were going to have to move some of us to other places. I was
married by then and had two children. I was getting a little nervous about just not
knowing where I was going. That’s one of the other reasons I left working with the State
of South Dakota. I liked the work there, but they didn’t have medical insurance or life
insurance and after you get married, that’s pretty important. I just got a little nervous
and I decided to go and see if I could get in to some more wetland work. I went into River
Basins then. River Basin had a wetlands aspect in it. I went to Aberdeen, South Dakota
where I had working with the State. Milt Reese was the Supervisor there. I was there for
a couple of years and they moved me to Fergus Falls. I worked in wetland there. Then I
went in to the Regional Office and supervised the Biologists in the prairie who were
working on the wetlands program. Then, they were setting up Denver as a new Region.
We were kind of uncertain as to who was going to end up in certain places. Ed Smith had
since moved on from the refuge to being the Supervisor of Refuges in Region 1 in
Portland. Phil Morgan had been his deputy out there. I had been out of Refuges. One
thing is that Forest Carpenter was a pretty parochial kind of guy. When I first hired in to
Refuges; I think they kind of expected that once you were in Refuges, you stay there!
Well, I moved back in to River Basins, so when Ed said that maybe he should move me
back in to Refuges and have me as his Deputy, there was a little bit of resistance in
Refuges. Eventually, I went out there in 1973 in January. I was his Deputy replacing
Phil Morgan who had just left and went out to Atlanta. I served in that function until
he…well, then the Area Offices came into being. I was one of the first Assistant Regional
Directors that they hired under the Area Offices. That’s when they had the Area
Manager selected, and Lynn was the Director. They got the ARD positions filled before
the Area Office, so we still functioned in sort of the old way. We supervised refuges out
of the Regional Office. When Area Offices came in, I went out there and came back again.
I was still in that position. I served in that position I think, from 1976 when Lynn put
me in until 1988. I had twelve years there. For the last year, I was working on waterfowl
stuff, but it was in Central Valley, California. I spent a brief amount of time in Wildlife
Services too, in Minneapolis. I had three divisions that I had worked in, so I had some
experience. I probably wasn’t the best Biologist in the world because you lose that
capability pretty quick. I knew wetlands pretty well. Then I got in to administration,
and like those people this morning pointed out, we didn’t have too many skilled
administrators. Maybe I was a better administrator that I was a biologist, but that’s
what…we set out to do some things in Refuges in Region 1 and we made some changes.
It was Ed and I to start out with and later it was with some of the RDs. After a time, I
eventually started the first North American joint venture in California as kind of a
collateral duty. I was doing that along with being the ARW for Wildlife. That’s when I
was back for my mother-in-law’s funeral and found out…Wally Stupki called me and said
that the Director had called him and told him that Rolf Wallenstrom had been terminated
because he didn’t take the move that they were giving him. Dave Riley had been stripped
of his responsibilities. He was the ARD for Ecological Services for River Basins, I guess,
at that time. I think it was Eco-Service then. I was reassigned from my job to be
assistant to him by Dunkle. I’d be in charge of the North American waterfowl planning in
the Pacific Region. It was just really punitive is what it was. My understanding was, and
I am not sure I am correct on that, but John Doebel had worked for me before. He was a
good employee and he had gone to Washington, D. C. and he came back. When he was in
Washington, I think Bill Horne who was the Assistant Secretary at the time…there was
some work to be done in Alaska that some of the Alaskan people weren’t comfortable
with. It was a land exchange or something. I’m not sure this is all factual, but this is the
way I recall it. Bill Horne told John that he’d like to have him go and work on that
project. John was a doer, so he went up there and worked on it. I think Bill promised
him that when he was done with it, and had done a good job, he would be placed in a new
position. I think John wanted the job I was in. I still wasn’t out of there. If they’d have
talked to me and let me know, “we’d like to do this, and we’d like for you to work with
John and make it an easy transition”…
But instead, when I got back from my mother-in-law’s funeral John was sitting at my
desk and it made it uncomfortable for him, and for me, and the staff. So I ran around and
tried to find a new office and stuff. We started to fight back. They had the Government
Accountability Office in Washington, D. C. They kind of oversee the government. They
came out and interviewed us. Eventually, I think they had some hearings at the GAO.
They kind of saw that there were some things going on in the FWS. They were creating
positions that weren’t really positions but they were trying to put people aside. It was
costing money. I think that might have been part of the demise of Dunkle. They
reassigned him. They took him out of the Director’s job and sent him to OBS in
Colorado. Then John Turner came in. I think that was right after President Bush
[President George H. W. Bush] got in. John Turner kind of put us back onto more of an
even keel. By that time, I think OPM ruled that he had to reinstate Rolf. Turner wrote
me a kind of a letter of apology for the way they handled the situation. That made me
feel better, but I think it made…that’s the way a lot of people were treated as they got
towards the end of their career. They kind of jerked them around and didn’t treat them
the way they should have been; with a little dignity. I see that they are still making that
mistake. I worked for one year, while this appeal was going on at the North American
Waterfowl Plan. I got it up and running and it’s been very successful. I was invited back
to the ten-year anniversary in 1996. It’s really going good, so I felt really good about
that. Some of the things that I felt good about after I had worked on them…we did a lot
of things, and turned around the use on some of the refuges out in our region. They had
kind of gotten away from the primary purpose of managing a refuge. They had water
skiing going on in some of the area of Ruby Lake where we had some of the best
waterfowl production, especially Red Heads. We finally got that turned around. It took
awhile, and it wasn’t just me. You had to have the RDs. Kahler Martinson when we
started that. Of course I knew Kahler from college. I was there in Portland about nine
months ahead of him. We turned something around on Ruby Lake. We also got control
of the cattle management on Malhuer NWR, which was pretty that was pretty much in
the hands of ranchers. There are a number of things that we did on refuges. We also tried
to upgrade, a little bit, the quality of some of our managers. Some of them just needed
some improvements and you can’t blame it all on them. It was the way they were
managed; just kind of let them manage the refuges in the field like they wanted to. We did
initiate some of the things in California that were unique. We established an easement
program on wetlands in California. That had never been done before. We kind of picked
that idea up from the Prairies. They used it for production habitat. We picked it up and
used the same concept out there for wintering habitat. We had a lot of resistance to start
out with, but it really has worked out well. It’s not a perfect program, but better that
sitting and watching it disappear. A lot of times it was the hunting clubs and the like who
still had the good wetlands. Some would say, “Why do you agree about that?” A lot of
times, what was happening was that these old time hunters that were really dedicated to
the waterfowl and hunting were either dying or leaving. What we were finding was that
some of the kids didn’t have that same feeling. So even if it had been a waterfowl club for
years, it was not guaranteed. A lot of these old guys really had a strong feeling about that
wetlands, so they kind liked the idea that maybe even after they were gone that wetland
was going to be there. We got a number of areas where we got the easement program
going and it was really successful. That fit right in with the North American Waterfowl
Plan.
DR. MADISON: Why don’t you tell me about that, since you were there?
MR. DEBATES: Okay, the North American Waterfowl Plan first came into being, and
Harvey Nelson was kind of the overseer of that out of Washington, D.C. They wanted to
get up one pilot program to see [how it would go]. Bob Streeter was in there too. They
picked the Central Valley of California. It was a new approach to doing business. We
established the committee, on the ground. We had the Audubon Society, the Defenders of
Wildlife, California Fish and Game, the California Waterfowl Association. There were a
number of groups who had actually in the past been our critics. We put them together,
and I kind of chaired those meetings. I had a good Biologist named Dick Bower who was
very good technically. Mike Miller had put together a concept plan on the wetlands that
were valuable. Then we went in with this group and developed some strategies to make
sure we protect those wetlands long after we are gone. We sat down, and I think we
wrote out about six major objectives to keep the focus. All of these guys had a lot of
differences of opinion. The Defenders of Wildlife were not in our camp, but they knew
that this was a key issue, even to their values. We tried to stress that we were not doing
this just for waterfowl. We worked on that as a committee, to find the objective. Then
we started to try and implement them. I remember some of those objectives. We had a
lot of discussion as to whether or not some of them were real or aren’t they. Some
thought we’d never get the Central Valley Project reauthorized. It was an irrigation
project and we didn’t have any guaranteed water supply for our refuges. We were just
doing it with water that was return flow irrigation water. It was getting tougher and
tougher. But we put in it there as a goal. There was one guy who was very astute in the
political arena. He was with the California Waterfowl Association. His name was Dan
Chapin. He had really worked the California legislature and he knew how to work with
the legislators. He really got a lot of stuff done in California. After I left, I heard that he
had actually gotten Senator Bradley out to conduct a hearing on the reauthorization of the
Central Valley Water Project. That was almost unheard of, but eventually, it happened.
Eventually, they got some firm water supplies for refuges, and also for some in stream
flows. That was after I was gone. I didn’t have anything to do with that, but I think that
the fact that we put that in the objectives and gave them something to really work on, it
really focused them. That was the best accomplishment to me, in the Central Valley. Of
course the easement thing was a tool used. There were some new acquisitions and the fee
too. One of the major objectives was to get the rice growers to leave some of that stuff
out there in the fall of the year. We were in an adversarial relationship with the rice
growers. I went back in 1996, they had that celebration of the ten-year plan, and there
were 400 and some people there. There were rice growers and all kinds of people who
had come together to work on a common objective; The North American Waterfowl Plan.
It was rewarding to me. Recently I went to the North American Wildlife Conference in
Spokane. The thing that really impressed me was how many joint ventures there are
going on now, throughout the United States. They are incorporated into the flyway
management. There is a lot of support. And the political situation is favorable because is
gives the politicians something to spend money on in their own areas. They can do it.
It’s kind of a Senator Byrd concept. If you give them something that they can do for
you, they are willing to help. From what I understand from talking at the Wildlife
Conference, most of the funding for the North American is pretty good. It’s primarily
because you’ve got that broad political support.
DR. MADISON: You’ve done a good job.
MR. DEBATES: Well, somebody has done a good job. The O and M part is still a
problem. There is still not that kind of support, not just for North American but also for
the entire Service. The Migratory Bird Program has been short changed. They are in bad
trouble; the flyways and stuff. They don’t have enough money. It was gratifying to me
to see all of the North American plans, and they are just about all throughout the United
States now. They are also in Canada. We were working with Canadians too. I think
that’s been a successful program. I had a part in it, but we had some good technical
people that helped guide us and made sure we had the right things to work on. Then we
had some good people following up to implement it. It wasn’t just the FWS people. It
had good representation and cooperation. I think really showed what you can do if you
work together, and that was an accomplishment. So anyway, that was kind of a good
final project for me to be on. I probably would have stayed on a little bit longer, but
when you get in an adversarial relationship with your own organization, you kind of get,
well, people are a little bit cautious of you. I shouldn’t necessarily say ‘cautious’ of you
so much, but the mid-career people are nervous. They can wonder if that is going to hit
me? Is that going to happen to me? So I think I lost some credibility with some of the
administrators; not so much with the troops. I think the troops liked that somebody
stood up and talked back to somebody who they didn’t think was doing a good job. I
served under five RDs in Region 1. I went there with John Finley, and Kahler Martinson
came. Then there was Dick Myshak and the last one I worked directly under was Rolf
Wallenstrom. Then Plenert came in while I was on the North American Waterfowl Plan.
There was more and more politics getting involved, each year that I was in the FWS. One
of my former bosses, Ed Smith, was very experienced. He told me that the big changed
that occurred in the FWS while he was there; and it continued to go that way, was back
when we used to be able to stand up to management when somebody wanted to say
something. Politically, if we had a good case, we could go back and it was non-biased. Ed
said that changed a great deal when they started adding a lot of staff at the Assistant
Secretary level. He said that back then, they used to only have one or two guys over at
the Assistant Secretary’s office.
DR. MADISON: That wasn’t that long ago.
MR. DEBATES: He also said that when you sent something back to the FWS, it was
usually your Director and key staff people who have you that kind of support. He said
that all of a sudden, most things that were controversial headed right up to the Assistant
Secretary’s office. I think that has continued to grow. I don’t know what the staffing
there is like now. But then, the other thing they used to do was to bring people up from
the Service to work up there. This was fine, but still, they just got more into the
management of your business than you really needed them in.
DR. MADISON: Were there other changes that you observed in the Service? You had a
pretty long tenure.
MR. DEBATES: For one thing, when we first started we were pretty much fish and
wildlife. The Endangered Species Act came in 1973, or whatever, and the National
Environment Policy Act came in. Both of those things changed the way we did business.
The laws that came in on the archeological side, and the Administrative Act, and all of
those things changed things. It was no longer manage your own refuge, dig your own
dikes and that stuff. You had to go through a lot of the same hoops that we wanted other
people to go through. So it was a different way of doing business. We had to hire people
who worked on impact statements. We had to have people with that skill; not just
reviewing them but writing them too. We had to have archeologists to look at the
archeological stuff. You couldn’t just go out and start moving dirt until that was done.
The Administrative Act made it so we had to make sure we did a much better job of going
through and making sure we involved people in the right decision making process. It was
pretty simple when I first started in the profession, but it got more complex. I think
today, I’ve been out for a long time, but I think it’s even more difficult. Now there are
just so many things that you’ve got to make sure you go through the right hoops. From
and outfit that used to drive around, and if they saw some predators, or saw some
burrows or whatever on the refuge that were doing damage, why, they shot them. They
didn’t tell anybody about it. But those days are gone forever. We just managed with a
lot more freedom. I think the other thing that changed an awful lot was that we never got
in the legal arena as much as we began to do towards the end of my career, and even more
so now. We did have a little bit of that at the end of my career. I had oversight, along
with Rolf Wallenstrom on the Spotted Owl issue. I had worked on an inter-agency
committee on that with BLM, the Forest Service, SCS, and everything. We knew that
this was a real problem. We had a subcommittee on the Spotted Owl that was essentially
made up of all the biologists from all of these agencies. They just told us that this was
headed for extinction if you don’t do anything about it. It was associated with old
growth, but it was as indicator of species. We tried through that inter-agency, or at least I
did, in getting BLM and Forest Service because they had mostly old growth forest left, to
start paying attention to the owl. They were really reluctant to do it. They’d tell us that
in a meeting, but when you got out on the ground, they were still cutting timber and not
paying that much attention to the Spotted Owl. We were unsuccessful in getting things
changed through that media. Then, when it came up to being listed, there was some real
reluctance because Watt and Odell and some of those guys were in there. It’s a little bit
like the climate now; they don’t want to add any new species. We knew that the
biological stuff was there. And Rolf was RD then. There were three of us that tried to
convince Rolf that we ought to move ahead no matter what. But Rolf had a good
relationship with the Chief of the Forest Service. They talked in over and thought they
could…. Well, what happened was that the environmental community on the outside
sued us. When it got to the Judge, the Judge sent back and essentially told us do a better
job. He said we couldn’t ignore this. Then when you get the legal stuff involved, you
lose all of your flexibility. You are better off doing something rather than getting the
Judge to tell you what to do. That happened in the Fisheries program when Sam went
out there. It happened with the Spotted Owl. It happened in all kinds of places; where
you get the Judge starting to tell you what to do. And then, I think too, that when we
implemented steel shot, which was a very controversial issue; that probably got Kahler
Martinson canned. We pushed it in Region 1 because EIS was down and everything.
Arnett was the Director of California at the time and we were really booming on it.
California was absolutely adamant against steel shot. They didn’t want nothing to do
with it. It seems hard to believe now, because steel shot is implemented all over. But
that was in the late 1980’s and early 1981. We pushed ahead with it, and Kahler
particularly. When Arnett got to be the Assistant Secretary, of course Watt was in there
then, a lot of people who came in from the outside into those political positions kind of
had an axe to grind. They didn’t necessarily come in a real good supporter of the FWS.
They were usually after [something]. They had some adversarial relationships. When
Arnett got in there, he just started chipping away. We had some research guys out
working under contract and he got those cancelled. That was about the same time that the
Senior Executive Service came in. I guess that would have been under President Carter, or
just before in the late 1970s. When Kahler was RD then, he had been under the old Civil
Service Program. When they interviewed him, they asked him if he wanted to be in SES.
He asked what the pluses of that were. They said he could have unlimited leave to
accumulate. The also said that if he didn’t like it and wanted to drop back in to the
biological end, he could do that. But when it came time for him to do that, they wouldn’t
let him. They essentially gave him an ultimatum of either going to Albuquerque, or be
terminated. He had some special family situations that made that bad. He could just see
the handwriting on the wall. He saw Albuquerque as the first; but what was the next.
They were using it as a punitive thing rather than on a positive note. That was another
issue we were involved in that was very controversial.
Another issue that we crossed Hodell on was, well, I shouldn’t say crossed, but
there was some power line crossings that they used to like to string across federal lands;
particularly BLM, but they could go across us too. We took them on on that. Hodell
was head of BPA at the time. They were going to string a line across our Refuge up at
Umatilla. The first time I met with them, well, they came in and met with me because I
had oversight on Refuges, they said they were doing to do this. I said, “Wait a minute!”
They said that they had the steel bought and everything already. I asked them where
they had been. “We’re going to let you [do that]”. That was a key waterfowl area. We
fought with them for quite a while. Hodell was the BPA Director. Word got our among
the power companies out there that the RD and some of his people were going to be hard
nosed about going across refuges with power lines. The word was that every one should
be aware of this. I remember that we had a major one that was going to go right across
Klamath Basin Refuge. It was a 5000kv line I think. We said, “No”. As I remember at
the time, Hodell was no longer head of BPA, but he was a kind of consultant for another
power company PP&L that was going to bring this line through. There was good
biological data that said this was a poor idea. We tried to stop it, but it was still moving
ahead. Kahler Martinson was pretty hard nosed on resource issues, so he asked Lynn,
who was the Director. Lynn didn’t want to take it on real bad. But Kahler asked Lynn if
he minded him going to talk with Andres. That’s kind of different. So Lynn told him if
he wanted to, it would be all right. Kahler got the maps and went and got an audience
with Andres. He just laid it out on the floor and explained another alternative that would
be better than this one. After one briefing with Andres, he said that the alternative should
be taken. Of course, he had oversight over BLM too. There was a BLM alternative, but
it took it away from Klamath Basin.
There were a number of issues like that, which were kind of tough from a political
end. Laxhalt was a Senator when we took on some of those issues out at Ruby Lake
where the powerboats were at. In California there was Arnett with the steel shot and
there was Hodell with the power lines. We weren’t exactly making a lot of good political
moves. Maybe we were naïve, but it sure got their attention enough so that they weren’t
just going to do some things that they had done in the past.
DR. MADISON: Larry, thank you very much. I’ve got to break it off here. This is
great!